LOVE THAT SATISFIES

posted by katiemoonSeptember 23, 20170 comments

THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN NEED FOR LOVE
Isn’t it interesting that the world over, people of every nation, tribe, and tongue long for love? I’m not speaking of romantic love. Not all long for romance. But all long for love. Like water and air, its an essential human need.

I have a theory I’d like to share about this today. Read it. Test it. See if it is so.

As I discussed in may first Prepare the Way series video, “What We Don’t Know About Who We Are”, and as the scriptures frequently attest to, humanity was sold into slavery way back in Eden. Since then, mankind has been under the authority of sin (Rom. 5:12, 7:14), which makes them no longer heirs (children) of God and charges them with the death penalty. Said another way, in Eden, the human race became the target of another race, full of hate, jealousy, and darkness toward humanity. Their goal? To annihilate the entire race. Their weaponry for executing their plan? Lies. Lies were wielded to bring humanity under subjugation and then death. And lies have continued to hold humanity hostage and rendered dead—in the higher form of its meaning.

AN ILLUSTRATION
Recently a friend sent me a book she wanted me to read. The book told the story of a survivor out of the Rwandan holocaust which took place in 1994. In under 100 days, some 1 million people were slaughtered in the name of ethnic cleansing and tribal rivalry for the throne. It’s such a horrific tale the author weaves as she recounts in graphic detail what she saw with her own eyes, heard with her own ears, and survived through with just a few others. Today, I want to convey just one story from within its heavy pages for the purposes of our discussion.

The author* tells the stories of the slaughter of many families through out it. The “killers”, as they were called throughout the book, were merciless. In one particular instance portrayed in the book, they came into a family’s home (if my memory serves me right, it was a pastor’s home). They lined the husband and young children up along the wall of a room. Then the wife was taken captive, stripped, raped multiple times by multiple men, then murdered right before her family’s very eyes. All this just before chopping the children and husband to bits with machetes. It makes me ache and nearly vomit to recount this story. To say the book got under my skin and stayed there would be an understatement.

Friends, sex was meant to be a beautiful expression of love between consenting husband and wife. But I think we can all agree how easily it is distorted into an expression of wickedness and horror.

THE ASSULT ON HUMANITY
Here’s why I tell this story and say what I just said: the race that was created for the high, perfect, lovely, and pure love of God became the race inadvertently sold to be slaughtered. And being identified by its killers as prey, our race is also treated by theirs with contempt, wickedness, and perversity in the meantime.

When we see such crimes in the physical world of earth, we are sickened and disturbed by them in every way. Yet, our enemy has blinded the eyes of our hearts to the same crimes committed against us every day of life on earth in the unseen realm. Ignorance is bliss, they say. Though, I beg to differ. The truth is, what is seen here with our eyes is not the whole story. Consider the force of the wind, which you cannot see, but which has effects you can see. Just because something is not seen doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. If that were true, the wind wouldn’t exist. Yet as we see the effects of the wind, we do see the effects the forced-slavery of the kingdom of darkness has over humanity. Yet whether we recognize the effects as the result of slavery or not is another issue altogether.

WHY WE LONG FOR LOVE
So here is my theory about why we all long for love… God created humans to be in blissfully happy and loving relationship with Him through the sharing of His glory, yet we have been taken captive, sold into slavery to sin. Instead of machetes, the deadly weaponry of our enemy is lies (John 8:44). Lies are counterfeit glory just as rape is counterfeit sex. When the glory of God fills us, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control are born in us (Gal. 5:22-23). Loving relationship with God becomes blissful reality. Yet the lies of the devil inherently fill us. And their presence can no more satiate our need for God’s love than rape can satiate the desire for a husband or wife’s expression of love. In fact, all counterfeits of God’s glory—all the lies of the enemy within us—do nothing but harm us, maintaining a perpetual vacuum in us for love. As stated, by in-born nature we are born deficient of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). This means we don’t have it in us at birth. But we do have “sin” in us at birth (Rom. 5:12). This counterfeit of glory causes harm which causes a vacuum in the heart for saving love. It’s like giving someone suffering from heat-stroke and severe dehydration a cup of sand to swallow. The sand would harm the person, intensifying the craving and sheer need for water. The sin within us from birth is toxic, harmful, and counterfeit, intensifying the craving and sheer need for God’s love.

FALSE LOVE
And listen, human love is lovely and wonderful. But the human heart was created for God’s love. It doesn’t take long into marriage to realize that your spouse—however loving of a relationship you share with him or her—will not satiate your craving and need for God’s love. Human love is beautiful. But it’s a picture of the love between God and his people, not a replacement for it. Satan will feed us lie upon lie to get us to believe human love can quench our thirst for God’s love. Lie upon lie we receive from him (not realizing they’re lies), and we believe these ideas will eventually lead us to fullness of soul. We think we’ll finally find, among humans, the love we’re longing for. While in reality, all that the lies are achieving is harm and the maintenance of the vacuous hole within us, causing us to incessantly and perpetually crave more approval, acceptance, attention, care. Meanwhile, God’s love, in the form of His glory—His true, loving thoughts—is present and waiting and longing to fill our vessels full to overflowing with wondrous bliss and incomprehensible satisfaction.

TRUE LOVE
We were created for the love of God. The fullness of His glory within us results in the love of God within us. Without this filling, we’re parched. And we live like it. Yet!!—the blessed thing is that there’s no need for anyone to continue on in want for God’s love! If you believe Christ is the rescuer of your soul from the enslaved race of Adam, determined by her slave masters to be annihilated, that He’s rescued you from that evil plan and placed you into a new race in Himself (Rom. 5:19, 6:3-7, 2 Cor. 5:17, Col. 1:13-14), to which He’s promised his protection and defense and care and love (Rom. 8:31-39, Eph. 1:18-23, 6:10-13), then God’s glory has been given to your inner being through His Spirit which is in you (2 Cor. 3:18, Eph. 3:16, Col. 2:9-10)! And so you have access to the fullness of it, ready and available for you if you’ll receive in the truth of it into your soul.

DON’T SETTLE FOR FALSE LOVE
Friends, dare to believe He’s rescued you from the one who preys upon your soul, deceives you into longing for all that seems will satisfy your craving but can’t… Believe that God’s ready to protect you, fight for you, fill you, satisfy you, and love you forever. Dare to begin receiving the truth of God’s love for you. And not just the fact that He loves you. But receive His personal words of truth and light and love into your soul. As the enemy deceives us in the thoughts of our mind, so the Spirit of God will speak truth to the thoughts of our mind if we will hear them, receive them, and believe them (John 10:3-5, Rom. 2:15). Why settle for counterfeit love as the height of what our hearts can know, when we could be completely, utterly satisfied with the real, full love of God?

6 As therefore [you] have received the Christ, Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and assured in the faith, even as [you] have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. See that there be no one who shall lead you away as a prey through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the teaching of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and [you] are complete in him, who is the head of all principality and authority, (Col. 2:6-10, DBY)